Update on SCAPE Project

By: Anya Bonanno, Funding Futures Fellow & SCAPE Coordinator

Claverack and Philmont are participating in Partners for Climate Action’s Funding Futures program, which provides training and funding support for communities to implement a year-long listening campaign. The goal of the listening campaign is to identify our community’s top ecological goals and funding mechanisms that could support them. We have named our project “SCAPE,” short for “Stewarding Claverack and Philmont’s Environment.” SCAPE is a non-partisan, volunteer-run initiative that is open to all Claverack and Philmont community members.

SCAPE volunteers, many of whom are Climate Smart Community members, have been actively engaged in our community listening campaign since September 2025. Our focus has been to understand what residents love about Claverack and Philmont, what aspects of the natural environment people most value and enjoy, their concerns about it, and what locally actionable ideas they have to protect or enhance the environment. Relevant ideas may be for concrete projects, policy proposals, or plans, and could be suited for various modes of implementation, including grassroots, non-profits or businesses, or our municipal governments.

Volunteers have interviewed 70 community members on these topics. To ensure everyone can participate, we have opened a confidential online questionnaire with the same questions. To date, we have received 36 online responses. The online questionnaire is still accepting responses through the end of February (visit https://philmont.org/scape-questionnaire/). 

Our analysis of these conversations is ongoing, but so far, people’s values and ideas are coalescing around several key topics. The things people value most about our community include: its small-town character and neighborliness, High Falls, Summit Lake, farms, the natural beauty of open space and views, our small businesses, opportunities for outdoor recreation of all sorts, and wildlife.

People’s ideas have centered around protecting and enhancing related aspects of our community. Priorities mentioned several times have included: improving trail connectivity across the town for safe walking and bicycling, restoring Summit Lake reservoir and its environs, a need for community food growing spaces, expanding social opportunities for all ages, restoring existing buildings to address affordable housing, a zoning approach that balances housing/development with farmland preservation and conservation, addressing deer overpopulation and invasive species, and expanding protected wildlife habitat.

To present these ideas and increase community engagement, SCAPE is hosting two events in February open to all Claverack and Philmont community members. The second event will be on Saturday, Feb 21 from 10:30 am - 12:00 pm at the Claverack Free Library. There will be free food, short presentations from the project, a Town trivia challenge with prizes, and children’s activities. Please join us and RSVP at https://bit.ly/scape_rsvp.

In March, we will be sending a Town-wide mailer with the ideas collected from the listening campaign. Residents will be invited to select their top three priorities. Final results will be presented at a Town-wide picnic in the late Spring, date TBD.

Questions? Interested in volunteering or contributing to a future event? Email us at yourideas.scape@gmail.com.

Visit us online at projectscape.org and on Instagram @scape_together.